You have two creative concepts and you want to know which one sells. Because every Renable design runs off the same catalog, you don't need a second feed, a second catalog, or a second set of products — you need two ad sets pointed at the same catalog, each pinned to a different design.
Renable does not build the test for you. You build the branches in Meta Ads Manager the way you would build any A/B test, and Renable decides what each branch shows. This article is the practical version of that split.
Before you start#
- A Meta channel that's published and live, with an ad account connected — see The Renable Options browser extension.
- The two designs you're comparing, already in that channel's feed.
- On a channel with adaptive designs on, that means two design groups — see Set up design groups.
- On a channel that still picks designs by position, it means two designs in the feed. Both work; the difference is only what you click in the panel.
- A campaign you're willing to change. Switching a design has a cost on Meta's side (below), so this is not something to do casually on your best-performing ad set.
1. Compare like with like#
A test only answers a question if the two branches differ in one thing. Two mistakes make the result meaningless before you start:
- Different shape coverage. If one design group carries a tall design and the other doesn't, the second one can show letterboxed on Stories and Reels-style surfaces, and you're measuring shape coverage rather than creative. Give both groups the same shapes, or accept that you're comparing two different things.
- Different media. A group carrying video and a group carrying only images aren't the same kind of thing either — Meta chooses image or video per impression on the first one. That can be a perfectly good test, as long as it's the test you meant to run.
The Adaptive designs dialog nudges you when a group is missing a shape the base group has. It's worth clearing that before you spend budget.
2. Check both designs are actually ready#
Open one of the ads you're about to change. Before you commit budget, the Renable Options panel already tells you the three things that go wrong:
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Coverage — "Renders for 92% of products in this feed". This is the number that quietly ruins tests: where a design is missing for a product, that product falls back to your default designs in that branch, so a branch with 60% coverage is 40% a test of your everyday creative. A very low or 0% figure means the design isn't meaningfully in the feed yet.
Where you can read that number matters. On a channel with adaptive designs on, the panel shows these percentages only under the group the ad is currently running — the groups listed under Other design groups show their shapes, not their coverage. So check a group by opening an ad that already runs it, or pin the first branch and read its figures there before you start the second. On a channel that still picks designs by position, every listed design carries its own figure, so you can compare both before switching either.
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Freshness — when Renable last updated the feed and when Meta last fetched it. A design change only reaches your ads after both have happened, and the panel names whichever step is still pending.
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Whether Meta has the design yet — a design Meta hasn't ingested is marked on its row and again in the switch confirmation. That's a warning, not a block: in our own testing the ad kept running normally on the default designs and started showing the pinned design as soon as Meta fetched the feed. But that is exactly the problem for a test — an ad spending its first days on your default designs is not the branch you think you're measuring, so wait for the fetch before you start counting.
3. Build the branches in Ads Manager#
This part is entirely Meta's. At a high level:
- Take the ad set you want to test and duplicate it, once per design you're comparing. Duplicating keeps the ad set's setup — same catalog, same audience, same budget, same placements — so the design is the thing you changed.
- Name each ad set after the design group it will run (
black-friday,evergreen). You'll be reading these names in a report later, and Meta's report will not know anything about your designs unless the names carry it. - If you want Meta to run the comparison formally rather than eyeballing two ad sets, use Meta's own A/B test feature to link them, which is what keeps the branches from competing with each other. Follow Meta's own guidance for how it splits and reports.
[VERIFY: the current name and location of Meta's A/B test feature in Ads Manager, whether it is started from the campaign or the ad set, and exactly how it separates the branches — Meta renames and moves this regularly.]
4. Pin each branch to its design#
Open the first branch's ad in the Ads Manager ad editor, with the Renable Options extension installed.
- With adaptive designs on, the panel lists your design groups. Click Use on the group this branch should run, review the confirmation, and confirm.
- Without adaptive designs, the panel lists individual designs and you pick one the same way.
Repeat on the other branch's ad, picking the other design.
Ads Manager's own preview doesn't refresh by itself, so the switch dialog offers a one-click Reload page afterwards.
5. What a switch costs#
The panel says this on every switch, and it's the reason not to do this on a live winner without thinking:
- Ad creatives can't be edited on Meta, so switching creates a new version of the ad's creative and points the ad at it.
- Meta may review the ad again before it runs.
- A live ad's delivery learning may restart. Switching on a paused ad avoids that cost — so duplicate, pin while paused, then start the branches together. That also makes the test cleaner, because both branches begin from the same point.
6. Read the result on Meta's side#
Results live in Ads Manager, not in Renable. Renable knows which design each ad runs; it does not receive performance data back from Meta, so nothing in Renable will tell you which branch won. Read the branches in Meta's reporting the way you'd read any other ad-set comparison — which is exactly why step 3's naming matters.
How many branches, and how much budget#
Fewer branches beat more. Every branch you add splits the same budget and the same conversions, so two designs compared properly tell you more than five compared badly.
Meta needs enough delivery in each branch to tell a real difference from noise, and how much that is depends on your budget, your price point, and your conversion rate. Nobody — including Renable — can give you a product-wide number for that up front, so don't take one from anyone who offers it. Run the branches long enough that the numbers stop moving around, and be honest with yourself about whether the gap you're looking at is a gap.
One thing worth doing regardless: change one design at a time. Adding a design group never changes which image an unpinned ad shows, so you can leave your evergreen ads running untouched while the test runs beside them.
Video is the exception. A group's videos are the product's videos, and any ad with Dynamic Media on can draw on them whether or not it's pinned — so adding video to one branch's group can change what your untested ads show too. Keep video out of a test you want cleanly isolated, or add it to both branches deliberately. Run different designs for different campaigns or seasons covers the scoping in full.
After the test#
The winner is already a design group in your channel, so "rolling it out" is just pinning more ads to it — see Run different designs for different campaigns or seasons. The loser can stay in the feed doing nothing: an unpinned group costs nothing and changes nothing. Delete it only if you actively want it gone.
Troubleshooting#
Both branches look identical in Ads Manager's preview.
The preview doesn't refresh on its own — reload the page. If it still looks the same, check the panel's freshness line: Meta may not have fetched the feed carrying one of the designs yet.
One branch doesn't look like the design I pinned.
Check that design's coverage figure in the panel — with that branch's own ad open, since the panel reports coverage for the group the ad is currently running rather than for the ones it offers. Where the design is missing for a product, that product falls back to your default designs in that branch, so a partly-covered group shows a mix of the concept you're testing and your everyday creative.
The panel won't let me switch a design.
The panel explains why in that feed's own terms. The two common cases are a feed whose design positions vary per product and a feed sending images two different ways — different problems with different fixes, both described in The Renable Options browser extension.
Where to go next#
- Set up design groups — getting the two groups in place first.
- Adaptive designs — why pinning by name keeps Meta adapting the shape.
- Adaptive designs and design groups — group, design and shape, defined.
- The Renable Options browser extension — the panel's checks and warnings in full.
- Run different designs for different campaigns or seasons
- Get video into your catalog ads